By J.B. Salter

For The North Jefferson News



Editors note—the following article first appeared in the July 12, 1990 issue of The North Jefferson News.



One thing about the good old days is that you can remember the warm sunny days under a chinaberry tree and forget about the cold frosty mornings when you were standing on a cold floor trying to start a fire to cook breakfast.

We all have a tendency to forget the hard times and magnify the sweet days of summer.

Every time I travel U.S. Interstate 65, south and I pass the 41st Street exit, my eyes are always drawn off to the west. Those few houses are the remains of a thriving community known as Sayerton. The old commissary is gone along with most of the other buildings, but the memory lives on.

There were always plenty of people around the old company store. Some miners played checkers or dominos to pass the time before the next shift in the mines.

The thing I remember most about the old store was the counter where they displayed the pocket knives. Sometimes if I stood there long enough, Mr. Henry Devaney or Mr. Perry Monroe would take one of those beautiful knives out of its case and allow me to hold it for a few seconds.

The proudest day of my young life was when I became the proud owner of one of those knives. The little pocketknife had three blades and a bone handle. Each blade was designed for a different purpose, but I had my own personal use for each blade. The little knife was a Remington. It would be worth a lot of money now if I still had it.

The little Remington knife became my most prized possession along with my old Redbone squirrel dog named Dan, and of course my .22 caliber Savage semi-automatic rifle.

My life was complete when the four of us were together, my dog, my knife, my rifle and me.

One cool autumn afternoon, I was squirrel hunting and old Dan treed a squirrel over towards Hillview. When I found the dog, I discovered that the illusive bushy-tail had gone into a hole in a small blackgum tree.

I tried all the tricks I knew to scare the young squirrel out of the hole, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, I climbed up the tree and cut a small limb with my Remington knife. I then turned, trimmed the twigs off the branch and inserted the end of the stick in the hole. I could feel the squirrel in the hole of the tree, but couldn’t get it to come out. So I split the end of the branch with my knife and reinserted the stick. After a few careful turns of the branch I had the squirrel tightly secured at the other end of my stick.

There I was, 25-feet from the ground, holding onto the tree with my legs. It was getting dark and old Dan had gotten bored and headed home. I knew that if I pulled that squirrel out of the hole it could eat me alive.

I could hear my folks blowing the old fox hunting horn. There were worried about me because old Dan had come home without me. Desperately I put my old leather hunting cap over the den hole and slowly pulled the squirrel up to the entrance of the hole. I could feel the squirrel on the other side of the hat. I opened the long blade of my knife and plunged the blade through the top of my hat. After I was sure the squirrel was dead, I dropped the stick to the ground. With a firm grip on the squirrel’s tail, I quickly shimmied down the trunk of the tree. Once on the ground, I realized with horror that I had not only dropped the stick, but also my Remington pocket knife.

By the time I was on the ground it was completely dark. The blind search for my knife was in vain.

I finally had to leave without my knife. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I vowed to myself that I would return as soon as possible and search for it.

It was three days later before I was able to return to the spot where I had lost my little Remington knife. However, with a great deal of relief, I found it. The knife had stuck into the leaves with the blade pointing towards the sky.

More than 56 years have passed since I found that little Remington knife. And to tell the truth, now I couldn’t tell you for the world, whatever happened to it. A knife that was my prized possession.

The memory of the little old knife did not even resurface until Father’s Day in 1990. I was in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. My two grandsons handed me a small package and the two boys helped me tear away the paper. When I opened the box, there before me was a bright, shiny, new pocketknife. It had a bone handle and the image of a silver bullet inlaid into the handle. It was my new little Remington knife, a gift from my family.

Maybe I can hold onto this special little Remington knife forever.